David Mitchell on Atheism

you can drop the passive aggressive overtone

You should probably get a handle on your emotions since asking if you read my post after you repeated back to me something I just said is completely reasonable and not "passive aggressive" in the least.

you're saying that I can say if you ask me if there is a coin in your hand, and I say, "Well, I can't say I don't believe. But I also can't say that I do believe." that means I do believe...?

Before asking me that, you should look and see if there's anything that you can quote from me saying that, because I didn't say anything even similar. All I said is that if you don't have a given belief, then you're a non-believer by definition. It literally means "belief X is not one of the beliefs I have".

You're making some strange leaps in logic to try to force me into one of two categories to prove that no third category exists.

There are two choices to the question "Do you currently affirm belief X as true?". You either currently do possess the belief, or you do not. The reason you don't possess it can be that you don't know if X is true or false, but it is still a binary question whether you currently claim it is true. Please actually try to understand that, because every response you make shows that you're conflating the truth of X with the question of whether you currently claim it is in fact true. I'm talking only about the latter.

If I also can not say, "I believe that thepantsparty does have a coin in his hand". That makes me a believer.

And you call me "passive aggressive" for asking if you're actually reading what I'm saying. This is what was said but which you decided to skim rather than seriously consider:

You're a nonbeliever on both questions

So again, I'm gonna ask you: did you read what I said or not?

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